baby, you're a rich man

[zuckered]

Likability. I should have known that everything would come down to that. Years have passed since I last even set foot in Kirkland House, since those days when I shuffled from class to class as that nameless nobody who managed to ace CS problem sets or even gave a crap about getting punched by the Phoenix or the Porcellian— with the money I've made from facebook, I could literally buy Mount Auburn St., I could probably take a crack at University Hall, I could double even the billions of dollars of endowment that Harvard has in its vaults, and people know it. Scratch being the next Bill Gates, now everyone's projecting that I'll make Man of the Year all on my own, no need for help from a trophy wife or a washed up musician. And yet, when it comes down to it, it's still one big popularity contest, and I've got black marks on my record. Like publicly shaming Erica Albright over the internet. Or like comparing people's school facebook pictures to...

"Farm animals," Mark said, his voice tense with resignation, fingers tapping on the side of his laptop.

The deposition room was empty at last, save for Marylin, and why she lingered, Mark didn't really know. It was the first time that he hadn't minded someone bringing him bad news since leaving Harvard. By the time facebook's momentum had started building, most people neglected to let Mark know the full extent that his actions would have on others, preferring to linger at the safety of their desk rather than piss the CEO off. At first, it had been novel. The rewards reaped from a long, tireless effort on the biggest project of his life, perhaps even of his generation. After a while, though, the shine wore off. People seemed disingenuous, kind only for their own benefit, vultures just waiting to descend at first opportunity. As much as he'd come to agree, in his own way, with Eduardo's assessment of Sean Parker as being paranoid, blinded by his own fifteen minutes of fame and the strobe lights of the party he demanded that his life be, sometimes Mark could still understand.

His eyes carefully followed Marylin's slight nod. "Yeah," she agreed.

At least she was honest. Mark rolled his eyes, shook his head, memories from years ago all dredged up in the past couple of months to the forefront of his mind. Some details had faded away with time, some conversations feeling unnatural out of context, but at the bottom of it all, Mark knew. Had always been self-aware. It just hadn't mattered much, what other people thought of him, provided those few steady constants remained in his life. With the barest of exhales, his fingers trailed along the edge of his laptop. "I was drunk, and angry, and stupid," he admitted, not sure if the disdain in his voice was self-directed, or at the inability of others to let such a minor detail go. Maybe both.

"And blogging," Marylin added, shaking Mark out of his reverie.

His expression darkened. Right. The internet's not written in pencil, Mark, it's written in ink.

"And... blogging," he agreed, his eyes traveling along the ceiling of the room, deliberately avoiding Marylin's gaze. It wasn't really the money he was concerned about, it was the pure principle of the matter. One stupid night. One stupid night, leading to one of the most revolutionary networking sites that the world had seen to date, yet a stupid crack about a girl's bra size and putting into practice what guys did on a daily basis on the internet (who didn't compare the hotness of women, it was practically a man's rite of passage) threw all of that into its shadow.

"Pay them," Marylin suggested, her gaze even, expression frank as she arched a brow. "In the scheme of things, it's a speeding ticket. That's what Sy will tell you tomorrow."

As she shifted to stand, Mark glanced over, fingers playing with his laptop, ready to open it again. "Do you think anybody would mind if I stayed and used the computer for a minute?" he asked, thoughts still swirling.

"I can't imagine it would be a problem," she replied lightly, heels clicking on the floor as she readied to leave.

"Thanks," he said, eyes darting from her to his laptop a few times, before he opened it again; her quick exit probably meant that she had better things to do than linger over a case that was, in spite of being connected to facebook, probably an easy close for the firm. The time she'd taken to outline everything for him, that was her own, not part of the job description, and it softened him just a touch. "I... appreciate your help today."

"You're not an asshole, Mark," Marylin remarked, the tapping of her heels coming to a halt. His brow furrowed as he turned, not expecting the statement, or indeed anything other than hearing the swish of the door as she left. The look on her face seemed sympathetic, inexplicably, and Mark wasn't sure what to do about that. Wasn't sure what to say to it, and so only stared as she spoke up again. "You're just trying so hard to be."

The glass doors and walls made it easy to watch Marylin's progress as she left, but soon enough Mark turned back to his computer, gaze distant. He liked that aspect of the room. Wondered if it was a deliberate design, or at least a marked choice on the part of the person who had booked the room for the deposition, putting it somewhere people couldn't hide. Where even outsiders would be able to read every last expression. Revealing. But as he'd never had anything to mask in the first place, it didn't bother Mark any more than the open desks at facebook's headquarters ever had. Hearing every last keystroke echo in the room, he curiously opened facebook up, typing in a single name: Erica Albright.

Huh. Apparently she had an account.

He clicked on the friend request button, not sure if it was a morbid curiosity that drove him there or an actual desire to reconnect. Knowing himself, probably more the former. Regardless, it only took a few seconds before he confirmed the request, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair, expression the very picture of levity, even as his finger reached over to press the F5 key. Twice. Thrice.

She said he could use the room, after all.

It was only when Mark looked up properly, prying his eyes away from the screen, pausing before hitting the refresh key again, that he realized something had changed. No longer seated in a newly purchased Herman Miller chair, no longer surrounded by panes of glass, Mark's eyes met slightly yellowed walls and his hands ran over the grain of an old, worn wooden chair. Shortly thereafter, his eyes flew to the corner of his computer screen.

No wireless signal.

Comments

[pointzerothree]

Eduardo just smiles, head turning in Mark's direction as they walk down the path. There's really nothing more to be said about it than that, when he'd rather not risk Mark changing his mind. It's a stupid thing, a small thing, inconsequential in the long run, but at least it will let him be needed, if only for another day. At least this way, it's all the more unlikely that Mark will wake up and realize this has been a mistake, that it won't be worthwhile to try to mend fences after everything that's happened between them. He was cut out once before, after all; this time, at the very least, he can't let himself be surprised if it happens again.

That doesn't make it any less of a good thing to have Mark want him around now.

"My place is right up here," he says several steps later, gesturing off the path to his hut. If nothing else, he really is pleased with its location; it's always nicer out here, just off the beach, the air a little clearer. He likes the typical humidity, too accustomed to it not to, but this is just lovely. "Don't mind the, um. In the yard, is my... chicken."

[zuckered]

It's a hut. Actually a hut. Mark knows that Eduardo hasn't always lived the traditional Ivy League life, that the Saverins are much more self-made than the Winklevii have been in recent generations, but still, one doesn't exactly expect anyone able to pay for university to live in a hut of wood and bamboo. Fortunately, it's not the lack of material goods and luxuries that Mark minds, so all he gives the hut is a skeptical glance before he turns back and belatedly processes what Eduardo has to say. In the yard is...

A brow quirks.

"Your chicken," Mark repeats, brows furrowing in disbelief. It's a stupid thing, the matter of the chicken, one that Eduardo's always taken far more seriously than he should. (PETA will call just about anything a violation of animal rights, provided the animal's cute enough.) "Don't tell me you actually felt bad about the Phoenix's mascot. It's a chicken, it won't even remember the cruelty an hour later, a lot of commercial chicken feed actually uses chicken in it, like a fowl soylent green."

[pointzerothree]

Eduardo lets out a huff of a laugh, doing his best (and mostly succeeding) to keep any bitterness from creeping into its tone. It would have been nice, he thinks, to have Mark say things like this at the time, to point out that it shouldn't have been a big deal rather than leaving Eduardo to try to defend himself once more, when he was already going to have to do so to the school and the various animal rights groups and the Phoenix itself and his father. To have one person in his corner, that might have helped. It's so far in the past, though, that he doesn't want to dredge it all up, choosing instead to move on to an explanation.

"No, when I say my chicken, I mean —" he starts, bringing his hands to curl over the back of his neck, clearly self-conscious. "You know how you just... showed up here, out of nowhere? Sometimes things do, too. Like, from home. This isn't just achicken, it's the chicken. Showed up here back in February." He smiles then, slowly, a look entirely at odds with his demeanor from moments before. "I named it Sean Parker."

[zuckered]

Things are easier to laugh at in retrospect. Maybe it's something that damages in the long run, especially for someone like Mark, who exists more in the present than he does either past or future, who'll take how he feels in the moment and carry it along as much as necessary— for him to be able to laugh at events in the past just means that they're more likely to be repeated. He's been called an overgrown child before. Lessons don't always stick. The chicken is one such example: every single time it comes up, he just ends up laughing more about the matter, because it's so outlandish, ridiculous, proof right there that humanity has way too much time on their hands if they're concerned about the mistreatment of a chicken who has, at least, been whisked away from a life of egg production. The impulse is hard to fight, even if he knows that Eduardo is a lot more sensitive about the matter than Mark himself has ever been.

"You named it Sean Parker," he huffs a little laugh, lips curving upward. "How apt. Do you eat her eggs?"

It's juvenile, but it's the first question that crosses his mind.

[pointzerothree]

It takes a moment for the joke inherent in what Mark has said to occur to Eduardo, which he'll blame on both what he's had to drink and the fact that he doesn't think about things like that. When it does, he's not sure if he should be amused or offended or both, his expression — visibly shocked — somewhere between the two. Mostly, though, he's just glad Mark took it as well as this, but that's neither here nor there. Touchy a subject though the chicken itself might be, the fact that they can joke about this has got to be a good sign. He'll take whatever of that he can get, regardless of how it chooses to present itself.

"I hate you," he laughs, reaching out to hit Mark in the arm, both clear signs that he does nothing of the sort. (He did, for a while, but that's the thing about hate: it's an emotion inextricably bound up with love, so close as to be almost indifferentiable, and the latter is the only one he feels now.) "No. No, I do not."

[zuckered]

"No you don't," Mark agrees in turn, having been on the receiving end of such playful punches before, knowing full well what they mean. The two of them aren't incredibly tactile, as far as friends go. Most of that blame rests on Mark's own shoulders; he's just not the kind of guy who gets touchy-feely about his emotions, doesn't feel the impulse to reach out for a bear hug or any of its derivatives, and sometimes the impression that one gets from Wardo anyway is that he's so put-together that one doesn't really want to disturb that. Chuffs on the arm, pats on the shoulder, these are about as far as the two of them usually go, kind of a compromise between their two vastly different personalities, so it's a comfort to Mark, but not one that he really acts on. Punching Wardo right back on the upper arm, that'd be weird, out of line, because it's just not what they normally do. (Did.)

"If it starts following me around, I'm calling foul," Mark says as they near what he presumes to be the hut, signaled by a soft bird-like coo from the fenced off area behind it. "Pun not intended."

[pointzerothree]

"God, I hope it wasn't intentional, because that was terrible," Eduardo laughs, shaking his head as he crosses the last steps to the hut itself, opening the door and flicking on the light next to it and stepping aside to let Mark in. It isn't really any different from the rest of the huts covering Tabula Rasa, decently sized and sparsely filled, but Mark doesn't know that, and as such, Eduardo can't help a momentary nervousness. Mark will probably think this below him. Mark might not even want to stay, though he'd be hard-pressed to find better accommodations.

Aside from that, though, the banter of the past few moments has been so relaxed, a comfortable old pattern to fall into, that it's easily enough ignored. His gaze turns to Mark, expectant, as he gestures inside. "So this is it. Not much, I know, but you kind of get used to it, and just off the beach like this is prime real estate, so it works."

[zuckered]

The grin lingers on Mark's lips as he steps inside the hut, not even noticing the surroundings for a while for the way his eyes skirt around and look for a place to set his food down, the burger that he's brought from the restaurant because it's a burger— you don't waste a burger, they keep well. But inevitably, the first couple of seconds leave him unsure which places are safe to set said burger down (for all he knows, maybe Eduardo won't want food in the hut at all, because Mark imagines that none of the buildings here are quite as effective at keeping out pests), and so he looks up and catches the sight of the hut in full. It's... an island hut.

Not the most glamorous of residences, but it's an island hut. It'll do. Mark can't imagine that he'll end up staying in one of these for long (he hopes that they have something on the island made of concrete or cinder block and open for residence), but to back out now is just unnecessary. He's tired, Eduardo's probably tired, and as Mark's always said, all he needs then is a patch of floor to sleep on.

"It works," he shrugs, before stepping further inside.

[pointzerothree]

"Here, I can, um, take that," Eduardo says, reaching for the plate with the leftover burger on it. There aren't many places to keep it, given that he doesn't usually keep much food around the hut, but on top of the desk, he thinks, will do for now. It's better than nothing. That Mark's expressed something resembling approval — or, at least, acceptance — helps, too, though Eduardo still feels the need to impress, to do this right. They've spent most of the evening together now, but they haven't shared proximity like this in a long time, and this being the place he's lived for months now, it seems reflexive of himself somehow. His father would say to be a good host; a long time ago, Eduardo wouldn't have thought it necessary with his best friend, but he doesn't know now quite what they are to each other, whether or not this is going to last. "And if you don't want to sleep in that, I have a t-shirt you can wear."

[zuckered]

Whether or not it's the presence of a bed in the room that triggers the drowsiness, Mark finds himself blinking less frequently now, each repetition seeming to make his lids feel heavier, coaxing them to a full close. He waves a hand dismissively at the offer of a shirt, his brows furrowing slightly at the thought, gaze only barely managing to follow the progress of the plate that he hands over to Eduardo (its eventual resting place gets noted in the back of his mind, where it will inevitably resurface come morning. With a soft sniff, Mark pads around the room, turning once in a circle, almost in the manner of a dog looking for a softer patch of ground on which to sleep. Dully aware that he was only minutes from passing out, Mark did his best to peer over at Eduardo, his blinks slow and languid.

"You staying?" he asks, confusion the only emotion that continues to register on his face at all.

[pointzerothree]

"I was, um, thinking I might go over to my girlfriend's, actually," Eduardo answers, turning from the desk to face Mark again, a hand curling around the back of his neck. He shouldn't feel guilty for it when that's been his plan from the start anyway, but he does even so, regardless of the fact that it just makes sense. "It's pretty much right next door, this way you can have the bed, some privacy —" He shrugs. Plus, this way, he'll be able to tell Olive what happened, get some of this off his chest, which still feels tight, too tight, with more emotions than he can give a name to. "And I can be back in the morning, probably before you even wake up."

[zuckered]

Some of the details are familiar, while others are anything but. The idea that Eduardo would ditch a bro for a night with the girlfriend is, as has been pointed out by Dustin over the years, an occurrence that quickly becomes habit. That's just the way Eduardo is, shuffling wherever he pleases the most people, where he disappoints the fewest, wandering away from more enjoyable parties and back to his girlfriend's suite on more than one occasion— just because she's much more likely to be angry, between the two. In this, Mark knows to expect Eduardo to treat his girlfriend like a lady.

But this feels a little different.

(Since when have the two of them ever needed privacy from one another?)

Sitting down on the corner of the bed, Mark can't think of anything to respond with other than a nod. An acknowledgment. "Okay."

[pointzerothree]

"Okay," Eduardo repeats, nodding once, then summoning up a small, hopeful smile. Now that he's said as much, of course, he's reluctant to leave, not entirely convinced that Mark will still even be here in the morning, or that all of this has really happened at all. For all he knows, come morning, with a night's sleep behind them, Mark could decide that this has been a mistake, that he was right in the first place to cut Eduardo out, and he'll be back where he started, except worse off than before.

All of that, though, is all the more reason to go try to unwind. It won't happen while he's here, within the same four walls as Mark, hesitant to even turn his gaze in the other direction. Rather than towards the door, he steps towards Mark, taking a seat next to him, close enough that he can lay a hand on Mark's shoulder. Were they anyone else, they'd probably be hugging right about now, but that's never been their style. There's too much between them for that, anyway, Eduardo unable to help feeling awkward now that he's initiated something like contact.

"So, um, I guess that's... goodnight, then," he says, almost a question, but doesn't wait for a response. If he lingers, he'll be here all goddamn night, probably do something fucking stupid like watch Mark sleep just to make sure he doesn't go anywhere. Crossing the few steps to the exit, though, he does pause, turning to face back into the room as he leans against the door frame with one hand. "I really missed you, Mark."

[zuckered]

His eyes dart down to the hand on his shoulder. It's weird. This is how things used to be, he knows that, and he knows that for Eduardo, the habits are closer, less removed. He knows that little pats on the shoulder like this were always Eduardo's modus operandi, not anything Mark naturally leaned towards, and yet it feels almost as though a hole has been filled to some extent, that his emotions spill over the brim and wash everything else away. Maybe, he thinks with a soft huff of a breath, this is proof that he needs to take a night to himself, to just sleep exhaustion away until his mind is clear enough again to take a look at everything without Eduardo being around to affect him so deeply.

He sits there, almost entirely still, until Eduardo gets up from his seat, at which point Mark's blue eyes trail after his friend as Eduardo makes his way to the exit.

The admission that Eduardo's missed him at all hits Mark directly in the gut, leaving him a little queasy, the alcohol helping it all along.

"Yeah," he nods lightly. "I missed you, too."

[pointzerothree]

Why the words come as a surprise, he doesn't entirely know. For Mark, after all, it has been even longer since they've really talked, certainly since they've shared a room like this, and Eduardo still chooses to believe that they were, at one point, each other's best friend. There's something so direct, though, so simple about the way Mark returns the statement, one that Eduardo didn't say expecting any response, if only because he knows Mark well enough not to. They just don't get emotional like that. They didn't, anyway. Maybe it's tiredness, maybe it's beer; hell, maybe it isn't even true at all. Whatever the reason, it's still nice, making the corners of Eduardo's mouth lift a little, chest growing tight with some unnamed emotion.

"I'll see you in the morning, then," he says, a little softer, almost fond. "Sleep well, Mark."